Great column, Mr Quillen. The more taxpayer money available, the more Universities will take. Try and reduce the amount and liberals will scream we're "denying a right to an education" or something like.

If you want to cut something, how about all of those "studies" programs- "women's studies", "african american studies", "gay & lesbian studies".... Read the curriculum for those. Divisive, to say the least.

Sadly true in the most part - if the government provides a student with $5,000, the colleges will simply increase fees or pad the curriculum to eat it and leave enough to fuel the loan-sharks.In turn employers will ratchet up the minimum requirements to match, and we will be back at square one.

Browse Monster, Careerbuilder, Ladders, etc. and two things will be very plain - most of the positions require a degree even if it is for a receptionist, and the sidebars are stuffed full of advertisements by colleges to supply the degrees.

The question is: is this because we have government funding for students, or is it because we have a fixation on "the market" being the solution to every problem?

The claim was that if left to the market, the price of education would drop, the quality would go up, and everything would be better.

So how is that working out for us so far?

The next President needs to be Scientifically Literate - support a Science Debate for all Candidates

Mary who is so mad she posted several hundred words and didn't once even touch on my assertaion of to many courses of little or dubious value. Would love to sit down with you and read out loud the course descriptions of many of the courses in the Ehnic Studies department at CU in Boulder. When I was paying the bill for employees to get their degrees I would ask them to do just that when they wanted an easy course. They usually saw my point. I was also surprused that I was their mentor. Colege advisors seem to be the go along to get along types. Yes, I am judgemental about such things as many of these kids have no adults in their life to tell them hard truths.

One of the most idiotic articles I've ever read in the Post. One main reason why incomes are down is that college graduation rates have dropped in the United States over the past decades. The reason tuition has gone up? At state schools it's the flip-flopping of funding. Twenty years ago two-thirds of the cost of an education at our state universities was paid for by the state. Today students and their families pay two-thirds the cost and the state pays one-third. Today a state university like Colorado State University educates a student for 4 percent less in inflation adjusted dollars than it did twenty years ago.

When Google or Ball Aerospace need some engineers I guess they'll have to go to India, China or elsewhere under this writers belief that college is useless. How about our financial and banking industry in Colorado? Or Natural Resources? I know some of the knuckle draggers in Colorado Springs don't believe science is worth anything anyway so why bother, who needs them? Anyone in the ski industry care about weather or avalanche issues? Ah, heck there's that thing called science again. Maybe the ski industry should just call some senior in high school to work on avalanche prevention and predicting. Save some money and don't bother paying the kid either, just give him some ski passes.

What about our oil and gas industry? I guess they don't need geologists or engineers either. Or our cattle industry doesn't need all of the vets CSU produces. Or our farmers don't profit from knowledge about crop and soil ahem...science. And as this article and the comments totally lean right-wing, I'm sure you'll all hate on the political science majors that go onto become...gasp....lawyers. You know the people you righties call the first time you get into any trouble. Yes, the world according to you is that the universities are just a money trap, teaching mindless liberal thought processes and giving nothing back to this state's economy. I hope you don't get sick and need a doctor because they're pretty useless too. I guess you should just take back the computer you typed your article and responses on and shut off your Internet connection as without college graduates you'd have neither. Time to move back into your caves!

I see that Gene B could use a basic English teacher as the Ethnic studies he so hates is not spelled Ehnic but Ethnic. Just because YOU don't like a degree program doesn't make it worthless.

P.S. Just wondering how many microbiologists Coors or any other of our breweries employs.